AthenaHQ
Updated 2026-06-14AthenaHQ is an AEO/GEO optimization platform for AI-search visibility, used by Coupons.com, Checkr, and Rootly, with about $3M raised. Recent work includes the Athena Citation Engine validation, Oracle for correcting AI claims about a brand, and an OAuth-scoped MCP server.
Three scores, refreshed weekly from live market signals rather than a once-a-year analyst report. Presence is how established a vendor is in the market right now. Velocity is how fast they are shipping, raising, and winning customers. Agent Readiness is how easily your own agents can build on them through an API, MCP server, SDK, or CLI. Scores are relative across the vendors we track; the raw inputs ship in the downloadable dataset.
The Solution & Approach
AthenaHQ is an AEO/GEO platform that measures and improves how AI engines describe and cite a brand across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. Its credibility rests on proprietary data: a catalog of 3M+ real-world AI responses, the QVEM query-volume model that estimates prompt demand in the AI-search space, and the annual State of AI Search benchmark.
The product arc runs from seeing to fixing to engineering. The core platform tracks citations and share of voice. Oracle, launched May 2026, finds and actions incorrect claims AI models make about a brand. The Athena Citation Engine then drafts and refines content before publication, and AthenaHQ Labs reports a 0.90 correlation between its ACE score and real citation rates across 1,761 tested articles.
The category POV is that AI search is a leveler. Founder Andrew Yan runs a steady LinkedIn case-study engine, arguing smaller brands can outrank deeper-pocketed incumbents on AI answers, with examples like Nuvadermis, Grüns, Rootly, and AutoRFP. Partnerships with Noble and Uberall push the platform from citation intelligence toward placement execution.
Best for
Brands and SEO teams that want AI-search citation tracking grounded in proprietary query-volume data and are ready to act on it through claim correction and pre-publication content optimization, not just monitoring.
Pricing & trial
Self-serve plans start at $95 per month billed annually (or $295 month-to-month) for 3,600 credits across 8 LLMs with unlimited seats, and Enterprise is custom-quoted; there is no free trial, though the annual plan's first month is 67% off. Pricing.
Agent Experience
How you build on this platform (or wire it into your own agents):
AthenaHQ ships an OAuth-scoped MCP server launched April 2026, a documented API reference, and an llms.txt, making it a workable build-on surface, though API access is reserved for the Enterprise plan.
Reference customers
Coupons.com, Checkr, Artisan, Ollie, Grüns, Rootly, Nuvadermis, AutoRFP, Lago.
Case studies & customer stories
- AutoRFP drove 10x ChatGPT traffic, with 22.4% of inbound leads attributing ChatGPT source
- Grüns grew AI SEO citations 23x in two months source
- Rootly owns 52.6% of AI Search share of voice source
- Lago drove a 50% increase in demos from AI search source
- Nuvadermis 5x'd its citation rate and tripled AI-search share of voice source
Recent moves
- 2026-05-28AthenaHQ Labs published empirical validation of the Athena Citation Engine, reporting top-decile content cited 87% of the time versus 38.6% for bottom-decile across 1,761 articles. source
- 2026-05-08Andrew Yan posted the Nuvadermis case study under a 'Mr Worldwide SEO' framing, arguing smaller brands can win on AI search. source
- 2026-05-04Launched Oracle, which discovers and actions incorrect or mismatching claims AI models make about a brand; a Canva demo surfaced 87 contradictions in one week. source
- 2026-04-22Published a tracked-data finding framing LinkedIn owned content as a Tier-A LLM-citation surface with domain authority rivaling top media outlets. source
- 2026-04-09Duane Forrester ranked AthenaHQ the #1 AI Search tool, top-right of his quadrant on both coverage and confidence. source
- 2026-04-08Published the AutoRFP case study showing 10x ChatGPT traffic and 22.4% of inbound leads attributing ChatGPT. source
Company, Financials & Funding History
Founded in 2024 in San Francisco by Andrew Yan, AthenaHQ was rejected from Y Combinator twice before joining the W25 batch, then grew from that launch to a category-defining AEO/GEO platform in roughly 18 months.
| Date | Round | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-06 | Seed | $2.2M (FCVC and Red Bike Capital, Y Combinator participating), with angels Ashley Stirrup and Eli Schwartz |
| 2025-02 | Pre-seed | $500K (Y Combinator W25) |
Analyst placement
Duane Forrester ranked AthenaHQ the #1 AI Search tool, placing it top-right of his quadrant and first on both coverage and confidence scores (April 2026).